What I'm thankful for: Outracing the nursing home

Monday

Nov 22, 2010 at 12:01 AMAug 15, 2012 at 12:07 PM

FRANK FERNANDEZ, Staff writer

DAYTONA BEACH -- Arthur Lirot wants to show you something as soon as you walk into his tidy condominium. He pads over in his sneakers to a shelf and returns with a plaque from the Palmer College Paint the Towne 5K race.

Lirot just ran it Nov. 7. He's 81. And, not too long ago, doctors had told him he should be shuffling to a nursing home rather than running in a race.

"I won in my category," Lirot said. "It was the first race I ever ran."

"I placed first. My category was over 80 years old, so there weren't many of us," he chuckles. "Mostly just me ... I'm quite sure that was it."

The completion of the race was a victory in more ways than one for the trim octogenarian with wisps of white hair -- an affirmation of his independence.

Lirot is accustomed to plenty of freedom of movement. In his younger days, he hiked the Appalachian Trail. He met his wife, Betty, who later died, while camping in a tent one summer in a state park on Long Island.

After he retired as a mechanical engineer for Pratt and Whitney, he and his wife took up residence on a sailboat in New England. After living on the boat for five years, they set sail. For about a dozen years the couple flowed with the wind and the waves, skimming across the waters off the East Coast, the Gulf and the Caribbean.

They were sailing near Daytona Beach once when his wife developed health problems. So, they dropped anchor in town, planning to remain only until she improved. But he learned that was not going to happen.

"Doctors said it was dementia, so she wasn't coming back," Lirot said.

Lirot sold his boat and bought a condo. Eventually, his wife had to be placed in a nursing home because she kept trying to walk on her own and breaking her legs.

"I was very anxious to get working on correcting whatever I could correct," he said.

He went to see doctors and followed their directions. He took vitamins and improved his diet; he ate fish and lots of veggies and laid off the red meat. He stopped drinking. Just stopped, even though he said he enjoyed several drinks a day -- beer, martinis and wine.

He joined a senior group. He dug out his old harmonica and started playing it again.

And Lirot went to an occupational driving school in Orlando where, after a battery of tests, they found he could get behind the wheel again. He started driving his Ford Escape about six weeks ago.

He said he just didn't want to go into a nursing home.

"I'm much too independent for that, and I have been independent all my life," Lirot said. "I like the outdoors. I like to do what I want to do. So, I'll tell you: I busted my butt for a year and a half to get back on my feet again, behind the wheel again."

Now, he visits friends, drives and runs. He said he plans to buy a tent and camp again.

He sits in his living room in the tidy apartment with the model sailboats he built on display.